Review Summary: The Used grow up, but don't make Post-grunge their new genre.
In the past year the so called "Third Wave Emo" genre has had its many poster boys try to escape it. And who wouldn't. It's not only the most criticized genre in the last decade, but one of the dumbest. Emo stands for emotional hardcore (in case you didn't know). Calling hardcore emotional, is like calling trees wood. It's idiotic because, I don't know, it's not like Minor Threat was a brick wall or anything. But I'm not the first one to be hating this little tag, so I won't waste my time.
So as I was saying, 2006 has brought us many bands trying to get away from the genre. For instance their was Taking Back Sunday's , Louder Now, Hawthorne Height's 'If Only You were Lonely, and Thursday's , 'A City By The Light Divided'. Now all of these albums were decent tries, but suffered greatly from lack of individuality, not from their previous records, but from each other. At first glance you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. 'If Only You were Lonely' is Screamo Pop, 'A City By The Light Divided" is like Post-Punk revival, and 'Louder Now' is like a bad Strokes imitation. But my friends, each record suffers from one of the biggest musical catastrophes of all time. Post-Grunge. The so called following of Grunge has sent bad vibes all over these records, and much of music today. And that's where the lack of individuality comes from. Post-Grunge is known for having every song have almost the exact same riffs, vocals, drums, bass, the whole shebang. And I'm sorry if I upset some people, but honestly that's just how I see it.
And Emo has been effected by this. Greatly.
And I was greatly worried about this crap syndrome spreading over the Used. In fact I was almost certain it would. But thank god I was wrong.
What the Used have unleashed is many different influences on this record. Their first two records have obviously been accounted for on the track Liar Liar, (Burn in Hell), however the song has an obvious growth and more serious take than let's say "Maybe Memories" (off the bands debut, The Used). Similar to My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, there is an obvious Queen influence. For instance Hospital, has a very rhythmic guitar, is Similar to Queen's mid-career records (that were definitely their best), Pretty Handsome Awkward has obvious 70's Hard Rock influences, similar to that of Walk this Way.
The best track on the record is probably The Ripper, which opens the album perfectly showing listeners whats up ahead. There is the classic Used energy, another Queen influence in the second verse when the vocals are enhanced by a synthesizer Similar to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, and heavy screaming in the bridge not only by lead singer, Bert McCracken (who surprisingly has much deeper screams than the high pitched screams he was known for), but also some background screams from guitarist Quinn Alman, and bassist Jepha Howard. In fact, these background screams are found much more than on their previous records, which is by no means whatsoever a bad thing. The backing screams let Bert venture further into clean vocals, something he needs, and something he does. On Pretty Handsome Awkward the vocals are much deeper and more mature than previous songs.
Now as I continue blabbering on about deep screaming and what not, I also have to say that there's not as much screaming as their used to be, which is definitely something I miss. However the Used do have something of a trick up their sleeve. Since they recorded way to many songs (about forty I believe) for one album, they're planning to release an EP of heavier songs. So lucky me and every other kid who basically adores anything with any screaming in it.
Lyrically the record has both evolved greatly but still somewhat sticks to what they've been so good at. In Hospital the lyrics categorize a commonly used aspect of emo, which is basically feeling like crap and having all this frustration just build up inside of you until you just want to...go to the hospital. So then there is The Bird and The Worm that basically tells a dark story with something of a post0modernist twist that few can understand. And then Paralyzed is almost a mixture of the two talking about regular emo material but also sounding different and almost poetic,
So you’re probably wondering why this record wasn’t given a four out of five stars, seeing that I dig it so much. Well if you keep on reading you figure it out my friends.
One of my favorite aspects of the Used was their ballads. On their first album it was Blue and Yellow and On my Own, possibly some of the most touching ballads I ever heard. On In Love and Death it wasen't as good as the previoulsy aforementioned, but it delivered with Yesterday's Papers and Hard To Say. But the ballads realy don't make it here. Find a Way realy is not to bad, but Smother Me is way to soft and cheesy to fulfill something as great like Blue and Yellow.
So to conclude I have to say one thing. Lies For the Liars is a much mature work than The Used and In Love and Death. It is definatly dark and almost moody, but compared to In love and Death it's nothing
